Cotter's England (10 page)

Simon said, aye, he was home now but she wouldn't be seeing him yet a while.

"I'm goin' to him," said the widow.

"You're not goin' and ye'll never find him. It's dark and dreary, it's blowin' up cold. How would ye find your way to him by yourself in this night?"

"Surely I know me way home after living in one house for forty years and more since my wedding day: I never was away from it except to go round the corner to visit Lily, in all my life. I'm the old-fashioned woman." She laughed at herself, "If you won't let me go, I'll go and get Lily to take me with her. I know the way that far, surely."

"Aye," said Simon, "but ye don't know the way to St. Aidan's churchyard which is where she is tonight, and he too: and they're not expectin' ye or wishin' for ye to join them. Leave them in peace, woman, and go and finish your tay like anyone else."

Mary burst into healthy laughter. "St. Aidan's churchyard? You're daft, man. What are they doing in St. Aidan's? Are they courting in the churchyard?" She turned round hurriedly and said, "Where's my parcel? I can't stand talking daft here. I'm going round to see Willie. He'll understand me. You were always silly, I could never talk to you, Simon."

"He's not there and he hasn't been there for a long time."

"Don't be daft, man: I've no patience with you, saying such a daft thing," she cried out angrily.

Peggy came along the passage with her dog and said, "Lift up your foot, mother, man, lift up your foot, like I tell ye." Her mother, in surprise, lifted her foot, "Don't ye see, man," said Peggy, "that you're wearing one brown and one black shoe?" She quickly slipped off one of her mother's shoes and said, "Here, Tom man, go play!" tossing the shoe to the dog. The wild dog seized the shoe, dashed off down the passage and up the stairs where he stood panting, while Peggy called, "Don't be daft, ye daft dog, drop that shoe, man!"

"Eh, you're a wicked girl to tease your poor old mother," said Uncle Simon.

"Eh, mother, look, the dog's got your shoe," said Peggy; "mother, man, ye can't go visiting now, can ye? Now be yourself, woman, and get your tea."

"Tea! I'm sick of tea, nothing but tea, it's a load on me stomach and it gives me a headache, I can't sleep," said the old woman, dreadfully confused and worn. She let Peggy take her arm, but suddenly stopped and dragged her arm away. "No, no, he's waiting for me. He's sitting there by the fire waiting for his dinner."

"He's lyin' down," said Simon, "in the cold, in the ground, woman, and ye must recognize it in the end: and ye do recognize it and know it and ye know you're never leavin' your good home in the night to go on a fool's errand."

"That's a crazy thing," said Mary bluffly, "ye must be a crazed man: his wits are going: he's old."

"Aye, it's me wits," said Simon.

Mary said, horrified, "He's saying wicked things: get going, old wicked man."

"A'm gannin' oopstairs," said Simon. He turned his bent old bony back and stood looking at the dog racing in the hall. Mary suddenly laughed youthfully and raising her arm into the air, she brought it down as if with a knife, to her brother's back.

Peggy said, "Quit your tomfooling, Mother man, and sit down, for Pete's sake. And sit down, Uncle Sime, and don't mix in things that aren't your business. Always meddling. You get nowhere with that."

They went out and the old man turned back to his cold cup of tea which he drank before the fire. It was not fresh, but had been poured off cold soaked leaves from the morning. He looked beaten; and when Jeanie came down to say goodbye he said with tears in his eyes, "Ye see what happens? You're always in the wrong. Ye can never get anythin' but blame."

"Eh, Simon, cheer up, you mustn't pity yourself," said Jeanie cheerfully. She was a short solid dark woman, bluff and busy. "The poor girl's not responsible; she thinks it's for the best."

"Aye, for the best," said he. "Goodnight then: watch the step when ye go oot."

It was October…

I
T
WAS
October, getting cold and Marion had set out without her furs. They did not find the healer at Norwich; he had gone to Glasgow. They turned south to go home to the orchard farm where Marion Ilger lived. But now she wanted to go to London, to Nellie's house.

"I want to ask her about my play; and you could see some agents."

"But you haven't written the play, Marion."

"But Nellie knows how. She has her great play. She can tell me."

Tom laughed, "Nellie hasn't written a line."

"Are you very tired, Tom?"

"I often wonder if I'm in a bad dream. I don't recognize a place I've passed a couple of hundred times in my life. But if you want to, we'll go there."

In the next town he sent a telegram. At the next fork he took the London road. The lights flashed up and down showing the house fronts and hedges that he had seen so many times coming from the factories and airfields to her, so that he knew each one to come; and laughing would say, "And now—" The lights had already gone out. People went to bed at nine or nightfall anywhere outside London or were in at the television. Some sat on the doorsteps till the light faded; and then to bed.

When they reached the Islington street she could not get out; so he carried her up to the back room on the second floor, attended to her terrible wound and went down to get her something to eat. He fed her and sat by her bed till she fell asleep with her opiates. She took them now. Then he went down to the kitchen. He was there crouched between the stove and the kitchen table, poring over a newspaper in the bad light, when the key turned in the front door. He didn't stir, indifferent to the family, indifferent to everything, but to Marion upstairs in the dark.

It was Eliza Cook, a short rosy woman, about fifty. She had been a factory worker, then had a clerical job but needed the fresh air for her lungs and now worked as a door-to-door salesman. She beamed when she saw Tom.

"I thought you were disgusted with all of us. Why, Nellie said that London was plague and poison to you now."

He told her the story; they had been a long way looking for the healer.

She sat down comfortably and began to eat a piece of ham. She said, "Nelllie has a great idea. She gets a big piece of bacon and boils it; so we have all the ham we want. I do love ham. We never did get it at home. I'm a great eater of ham. I'd give up all the fowls and steaks in the world for it now. It's a craze that's on me; I'm getting fat." She said
hahm
and
faht.

Tom told her he'd like to keep Marion there till he found out about the snake venom. He had a pamphlet showing sad-faced sufferers who had been cured. She told him she was glad to be out of the office job where she got no air, light or peace with the telephones ringing. The tramping tired her and she hated arguing the poor people into buying; and she worked after hours, arguing against the atomic bomb; and upstairs, downstairs, ringing bells, working for the Labour Party. She was hot-tempered. Very often at night, she'd lie awake in a sweat, at what men and women had said to her. "I don't mind the words, Tom, I mind them being so foolish. For fear of the landlord, they think it's bad manners to talk about the bomb; and when I say your children will be destroyed, burnt up, they shut the door in my face, because I must be a bad woman. But I give it back to them; I show them up to themselves. I've argued a few into their senses. But it's very wearing. What is wrong with the Londoners? They have more percentage of sun than we do up north, don't they? But no fight with it."

"And ours? They're good at straight talking like the Scots; but what do they do, Eliza? The men do the pools and the women gossip. We're just one nation."

Eliza had been using the room Marion now occupied; she said she would move her things in a jiffy.

"The poor thing. I think you're grand, Tom. I told Nellie she was acting like a jealous sister."

"What did Nellie say?"

"She got into a flap."

"She thinks she does it all for someone's good. I can always stop her by letting her know I'm angry. She's afraid of losing me," said Tom.

Eliza said, "You're a good man. It's rare to find such good men as George and you; though George is a tough nut to crack and I often want to crack him over the nut. That's why we got divorced."

"Who got divorced?"

"George and me."

Tom kept his bright burning face turned to her and began to smile.

Eliza said, "Oh, aye, you'd left home and were out of touch. It is for Nellie's sake I say I'm his sister. She said the people up at home, your people, never would understand her having a second-hand man. No one knows very much. I wasn't writing to my family. George wasn't speaking to his. But I can tell you because I like you and you won't let on."

"And you don't mind living here with them?"

Eliza said comfortably, "Well, Tom, I am going to get out. But Nellie wanted it, she wanted me here. She thought it would keep him home; if there are more hens in the barnyard, he'll stay at home. And Nellie is a love, a dear. She is such a bright, go-ahead, loving soul, she wouldn't think of wrong. She thinks it's a consolation for me to be here too. She didn't want me to feel out in the cold because I'm divorced. That woman is a lovely soul, Tom. But, the fact is—"

She went on to tell Tom about her new man, a grocer's assistant.

"He's not much of a catch. He's going bald and has had a few women, not divorced, living apart, he's got bad feet too, used to be a postman; and younger than me. But I can't stand out against him. I've got to get a room. And I make George angry. We always did fight. I don't know what's struck me, Tom. Is it me age, do you think? I feel the same. He's forty you see, a bit over."

She flushed. They talked on. Tom thought he had better telephone a nursing home in the morning.

"How much would it cost, Eliza? I'd sell my car, for one thing. I've got some books I can sell, a couple of good trunks I picked up at an airfield, a wristwatch. I don't need anything."

"Isn't there anyone to help? What is she—a widow?"

Sulkily, Tom said she had a husband. "But he could only sell the orchard and then she'd have no home. And I want to do it myself. She's mine. She made them let me bring her. She can make them do anything."

"Them? Who's that?"

"Her husband, Ilger and her brother, a big sulky man who's there, Patrick Hall. He used to be an airman too; but we never got on. I don't like him."

"But wouldn't you take money from them?"

"Yes, I'd take money from anywhere. But they haven't got it. It's in the house and orchard. And they're hers. She bought them. She taught her husband—Connie, the man there—to run it; she taught Patrick accountancy—she made him learn accountancy. She can make them do anything. It's her personality and her charm."

"And what about you, Tom?"

"She wanted me there and I went. It was love."

"Aye, I know."

When he went up to bed, Marion was awake trying not to call him. He brought in some bedclothes, made up his bed on the floor. He was too tired to sleep; but dozed and several times during the night she called him.

She said, "I had a terrible dream; but I heard your voice all around me as if I were in the sky and you were all around."

Another time, she said, "Talk to me."

"What shall I say?"

"Tell me some of your horrifying experiences."

He hesitated for a moment, not sure what she meant; and rather annoyed, when he realized what she meant. But he said;

"In the war I had a friend named Cotter. We met in the train and were surprised we had the same name; and we became friends. He was going to my previous airfield. He had finished the service for which he had signed, that is, two thousand flying hours and he was grounded. He said he would never fly again. Plenty of them are like that. You couldn't get me up in the air again.

"They were giving him a celebration that night; and in the afternoon, as it happened, a crew of fourteen lost one of their men through sickness. It's the rule with crews not to take on someone else but to give up the flight and disband for the time being. However, this time a few of them knew Cotter and came to him: Come on, Cotter, this is your last flight, you can fill in for us this time. Others did not want to go along with him on his last flight. But it was an important flight and had to be done; so he agreed. It was an airfield up north, near the sea, on a coast like the Cromer coast, I was thinking of it today when we were there. It had flat grass sloping straight into the sea and was dangerous, especially with mist and low ceiling. However, they had had no accidents while I was on the airfield, though I heard they had two afterwards. This was one. Cotter was coming back ready to land, with the wheels out to land, and he flew into the ocean a few yards from the shore and drowned everyone, including himself.

"I don't suppose you're sleeping much there on the floor," said Marion.

"Oh, some of the best sleeps I ever had were on the floor. When I was grounded they had me in one of the test-beds for a while and several times I lay down on the planks and slept for hours, a good sleep; no one could have done it but people used to the engines roaring. There were propellers driving the air through sometimes at a hundred miles an hour; when you walk, you lean on the wind. I had one laborer who gave a lot of trouble," he said, laughing, and he started to think about it and laugh.

"How?"

"He was always missing. He would go away and never turn up till I sent all over the place; and then he'd come back with some excuse, he'd been to the factory or to get some cotton waste and I never could find out where he got to."

All through he gave his little laughs, reminiscent and teasing: "There were doors about thirty feet high to those houses; and we opened them according to the velocity wanted. They were always part way up; and we shifted them up and down. Well, one day I found out by accident, that he climbed right up to the ledge from which the blind rolled, and slept there. I don't know how he got there, unless he climbed up the blind; I don't know how he slept there. I suppose he shifted his back. One day I ran the blind down fast and I heard a shout. He was a tough fellow, really tough. When he came out of the army he was out of a job and the labor exchange sent him to wheel out an old lady who was paralyzed. Imagine the sort of job—a big husky coot like that! So he wheeled her out somewhere near Norwich or somewhere—I was thinking of it today when we passed that church and I laughed! He got so fed up and repressed, that one day he lifted the old lady out of her chair, hung her up on the church railings and raped her."